Bates College students have started a music program for residents of The Cedars over the three-month spring semester. The students will develop and implement enriching and engaging musical programs each week that inspire our residents to explore their musical artistic capabilities and form social connectedness within their communities. Students will share their passion for music while providing residents the opportunity to actively participate, make choices, and express their musical artistic capabilities through educational classes, presentations, creative composition, and interactive performances. The first goal of this program is to provide student musicians the opportunity to bring their musical artistry to older adults, practice their music in a unique real-world setting and cultivate reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnerships with older adults. The second goal is to provide older adults an intergenerational experience by providing opportunities for older adults to share their artistic capabilities, wisdom, creative insight and life experiences. Each program...
Music & Memory started with the understanding that music is deeply rooted in our conscious and unconscious brains. It becomes even more important if the functioning of the brain is deteriorating, as occurs in dementia and other types of cognitive and physical loss. Music can awaken the brain and with it, the memories that are associated with familiar songs. The Music & Memory program helps people who suffer from a wide range of cognitive and physical challenges to find renewed meaning and connection in their lives through the gift of personalized music. The approach is simple and effective: Music playlists – containing the beloved songs from a person’s formative years – tap deep memories long attached to the brain and can bring listeners back to life, enabling them to feel like themselves again, to converse, socialize, and stay present. Music & Memory has been a part of The Cedars...
On July 25, 2023, Dr. Susan Wehry spoke about Optimal Engagement at a cocktail party held at the home of Judy Glickman Lauder and Leonard Lauder. Bernard Osher was recognized for his contribution to this important project. The Cedars partnered with the University of New England (UNE) to study better supports for people with dementia. An interdisciplinary group of UNE graduate students in healthcare fields dug deep into scientific literature to identify best practices, evidence-based strategies, and gaps in knowledge under the direction of Susan Wehry, MD, Associate Clinical Professor, UNE College of Medicine, who co-leads the initiative with Angela Hunt, RPT, MS, our Chief Innovation Officer. The team’s recommendations will be reviewed by panels which include people living with dementia. This feedback and insight will inform the development of widely accepted, person-centered best practices that will have a transformative impact on older adults living with dementia and their...
Strategies to Help Your Parents Feel at Home in a Retirement Community Moving your parent(s) into a retirement community can be a very difficult process. We’ve met with hundreds of families and have put together some of the best tips we’ve seen for children to make the transition easier. Your family worked together to help your aging parents make a big decision: moving into a retirement community, like assisted living or long- term skilled nursing care. Their lives are about to become safer, simpler, and more rewarding, and the transition to a retirement community does not need to be stressful. Our quick tips guide can get you started on moving elders with ease. Yes, moving a parent to a retirement community is a big change—a change for the better. These benefits include more opportunities to socialize, make new friends and engage in meaningful activities, with caring supportive staff...
U.S. News & World Report’s, Best Nursing Home for 2020-21 has given The Cedars an overall rating of High-Performing for both Short-term and Long-term Care. The Cedars earned Best Nursing Homes status by achieving a rating of “High Performing,” the highest possible rating, for the care provided in both our short-term rehabilitation and long-term nursing care centers. U.S. News gives the designation of Best Nursing Home only to the top 21% of communities that satisfy U.S. News’ assessment of key services and consistent performance in quality measures. Now in its 11th year, the U.S. News Best Nursing Homes ratings and profiles offer comprehensive information about care, safety, health inspections, staffing and more for nearly all of the nation’s 15,000-plus nursing homes. The Best Nursing Homes ratings reflect U.S. News’ exclusive analysis of publicly available data using a methodology defined by U.S. News that evaluates factors that it has determined...
At The Cedars, we learned early on that changes in the way healthcare is delivered during this pandemic needed to be immediately adopted to protect our staff and those we care for. Having closed our community to non-essential healthcare providers and limiting physician appointments to those deemed a medical necessity, The Cedars needed to find ways to continue to provide ongoing medical care and connection to outside care providers. In our efforts to reinvent our healthcare services, telehealth emerged as one of the major tools to deliver clinical services via telecommunications technology. Through our Telehealth Program, staff is able to easily coordinate medical care for our patients and residents with primary care and specialty physicians, clinics and services. Additionally, telehealth has been utilized for interdisciplinary team meetings. This program has assisted in maintaining continuity of healthcare to our patients and residents, avoiding additional negative consequences from delayed preventive, chronic...
In these days of social distancing and ‘stay safe at home’ orders, it’s critical to keep our residents connected to their loved ones and community, for happiness and overall well being. As we have adapted and navigated our current situation under COVID-19, we want to take a moment to share some of the platforms, personal connections and virtual technology in place, as well as our approach to offering special events and activities. The satisfaction, fulfillment, health, and safety of our community members is our main objective and we look forward to a continued offering of enriching and enhancing programs and experiences. Our traditional in-house activity programs have been transformed to virtual visits and programs on each neighborhood, in a more intimate setting and definitely at a distance. The residents are enjoying balloon tosses, current events, word games, room deliver treats, Ask Google! and Money-Monday-Bingo, just as they always have...
On December 7, 2020, Falmouth High School (FHS) students, residents of The Cedars, and local artists gathered for An Intergenerational Celebration of Puppetry, Storytelling, and Music—the culmination of a four-month long project in collaboration between FHS, The Cedars, and Figures of Speech Theatre. Ian Bannon, Director of Education at Figures of Speech Theatre, designed and directed the project and performance around a series of creative storytelling sessions with residents living with dementia at The Cedars. Using TimeSlips, a collaborative ritual storytelling format designed for adults with cognitive challenges, residents draw on subconscious or implicit memories to tell stories. When it becomes challenging to recollect, residents are encouraged to move seamlessly from their memory to their imagination. FHS students in teacher, Dede Waite’s, theater classes traveled to The Cedars to guide this storytelling and rehearsal process—and to get to know these warm, wonderful, creative older adults. Bannon...
The Cedars would like to recognize and congratulate our first PAC (Positive Approach to Care) Champions. Pictured here are Jenna Perkins, Kelly Thumb, Tracy Fleck and Karen Cook. Each of these wonderful caregivers has completed The Cedars Positive Approach to Care Trainings – created by internationally regarded occupational therapist, Teepa Snow – and has demonstrated their new skills while working with our residents who are living with memory loss. Their care, patience, creativity, and positive attitudes all combine to make our residents’ daily lives more peaceful and connected. Working with each resident’s strengths, instead of focusing on their cognitive losses, translates to better days and more successful moments for people living with memory loss. As PAC Champions, each caregiver has signed an agreement to be a role model to their team in their Positive Approach to Care with our residents. You can find each of these caregivers working...
“We experience a deeper connection to events in our lives that we associate with music,” says Nick Viti, OTR/L, Manager of Life Enrichment at The Cedars. “Certain songs conjure up very rich and specific memories. For anyone experiencing memory loss, music is a powerful tool.” Thanks to a generous new grant from the nonprofit group Music and MemorySM, The Cedars has exciting new ways to use the power of music to help residents preserve and protect their memory, calm or uplift their emotions and enrich their lives. The Cedars received the entire Music and MemorySM program, an assortment of iPod shuffles, headphones and music downloads as part of the grant. Staff are working with families and loved ones to craft customized playlists for each resident, and to choose music connected with events in each resident’s life story. “Do you ever turn up the radio on your way to work...
Bates College students have started a music program for residents of The Cedars over the three-month spring semester. The students will develop and implement enriching and engaging musical programs each week that inspire our residents to explore their musical artistic capabilities and form social connectedness within their communities. Students will share their passion for music while providing residents the opportunity to actively participate, make choices, and express their musical artistic capabilities through educational classes, presentations, creative composition, and interactive performances. The first goal of this program is to provide student musicians the opportunity to bring their musical artistry to older adults, practice their music in a unique real-world setting and cultivate reciprocal and mutually beneficial partnerships with older adults. The second goal is to provide older adults an intergenerational experience by providing opportunities for older adults to share their artistic capabilities, wisdom, creative insight and life experiences. Each program...
Music & Memory started with the understanding that music is deeply rooted in our conscious and unconscious brains. It becomes even more important if the functioning of the brain is deteriorating, as occurs in dementia and other types of cognitive and physical loss. Music can awaken the brain and with it, the memories that are associated with familiar songs. The Music & Memory program helps people who suffer from a wide range of cognitive and physical challenges to find renewed meaning and connection in their lives through the gift of personalized music. The approach is simple and effective: Music playlists – containing the beloved songs from a person’s formative years – tap deep memories long attached to the brain and can bring listeners back to life, enabling them to feel like themselves again, to converse, socialize, and stay present. Music & Memory has been a part of The Cedars...
On July 25, 2023, Dr. Susan Wehry spoke about Optimal Engagement at a cocktail party held at the home of Judy Glickman Lauder and Leonard Lauder. Bernard Osher was recognized for his contribution to this important project. The Cedars partnered with the University of New England (UNE) to study better supports for people with dementia. An interdisciplinary group of UNE graduate students in healthcare fields dug deep into scientific literature to identify best practices, evidence-based strategies, and gaps in knowledge under the direction of Susan Wehry, MD, Associate Clinical Professor, UNE College of Medicine, who co-leads the initiative with Angela Hunt, RPT, MS, our Chief Innovation Officer. The team’s recommendations will be reviewed by panels which include people living with dementia. This feedback and insight will inform the development of widely accepted, person-centered best practices that will have a transformative impact on older adults living with dementia and their...
Strategies to Help Your Parents Feel at Home in a Retirement Community Moving your parent(s) into a retirement community can be a very difficult process. We’ve met with hundreds of families and have put together some of the best tips we’ve seen for children to make the transition easier. Your family worked together to help your aging parents make a big decision: moving into a retirement community, like assisted living or long- term skilled nursing care. Their lives are about to become safer, simpler, and more rewarding, and the transition to a retirement community does not need to be stressful. Our quick tips guide can get you started on moving elders with ease. Yes, moving a parent to a retirement community is a big change—a change for the better. These benefits include more opportunities to socialize, make new friends and engage in meaningful activities, with caring supportive staff...
U.S. News & World Report’s, Best Nursing Home for 2020-21 has given The Cedars an overall rating of High-Performing for both Short-term and Long-term Care. The Cedars earned Best Nursing Homes status by achieving a rating of “High Performing,” the highest possible rating, for the care provided in both our short-term rehabilitation and long-term nursing care centers. U.S. News gives the designation of Best Nursing Home only to the top 21% of communities that satisfy U.S. News’ assessment of key services and consistent performance in quality measures. Now in its 11th year, the U.S. News Best Nursing Homes ratings and profiles offer comprehensive information about care, safety, health inspections, staffing and more for nearly all of the nation’s 15,000-plus nursing homes. The Best Nursing Homes ratings reflect U.S. News’ exclusive analysis of publicly available data using a methodology defined by U.S. News that evaluates factors that it has determined...
At The Cedars, we learned early on that changes in the way healthcare is delivered during this pandemic needed to be immediately adopted to protect our staff and those we care for. Having closed our community to non-essential healthcare providers and limiting physician appointments to those deemed a medical necessity, The Cedars needed to find ways to continue to provide ongoing medical care and connection to outside care providers. In our efforts to reinvent our healthcare services, telehealth emerged as one of the major tools to deliver clinical services via telecommunications technology. Through our Telehealth Program, staff is able to easily coordinate medical care for our patients and residents with primary care and specialty physicians, clinics and services. Additionally, telehealth has been utilized for interdisciplinary team meetings. This program has assisted in maintaining continuity of healthcare to our patients and residents, avoiding additional negative consequences from delayed preventive, chronic...
In these days of social distancing and ‘stay safe at home’ orders, it’s critical to keep our residents connected to their loved ones and community, for happiness and overall well being. As we have adapted and navigated our current situation under COVID-19, we want to take a moment to share some of the platforms, personal connections and virtual technology in place, as well as our approach to offering special events and activities. The satisfaction, fulfillment, health, and safety of our community members is our main objective and we look forward to a continued offering of enriching and enhancing programs and experiences. Our traditional in-house activity programs have been transformed to virtual visits and programs on each neighborhood, in a more intimate setting and definitely at a distance. The residents are enjoying balloon tosses, current events, word games, room deliver treats, Ask Google! and Money-Monday-Bingo, just as they always have...
On December 7, 2020, Falmouth High School (FHS) students, residents of The Cedars, and local artists gathered for An Intergenerational Celebration of Puppetry, Storytelling, and Music—the culmination of a four-month long project in collaboration between FHS, The Cedars, and Figures of Speech Theatre. Ian Bannon, Director of Education at Figures of Speech Theatre, designed and directed the project and performance around a series of creative storytelling sessions with residents living with dementia at The Cedars. Using TimeSlips, a collaborative ritual storytelling format designed for adults with cognitive challenges, residents draw on subconscious or implicit memories to tell stories. When it becomes challenging to recollect, residents are encouraged to move seamlessly from their memory to their imagination. FHS students in teacher, Dede Waite’s, theater classes traveled to The Cedars to guide this storytelling and rehearsal process—and to get to know these warm, wonderful, creative older adults. Bannon...
The Cedars would like to recognize and congratulate our first PAC (Positive Approach to Care) Champions. Pictured here are Jenna Perkins, Kelly Thumb, Tracy Fleck and Karen Cook. Each of these wonderful caregivers has completed The Cedars Positive Approach to Care Trainings – created by internationally regarded occupational therapist, Teepa Snow – and has demonstrated their new skills while working with our residents who are living with memory loss. Their care, patience, creativity, and positive attitudes all combine to make our residents’ daily lives more peaceful and connected. Working with each resident’s strengths, instead of focusing on their cognitive losses, translates to better days and more successful moments for people living with memory loss. As PAC Champions, each caregiver has signed an agreement to be a role model to their team in their Positive Approach to Care with our residents. You can find each of these caregivers working...
“We experience a deeper connection to events in our lives that we associate with music,” says Nick Viti, OTR/L, Manager of Life Enrichment at The Cedars. “Certain songs conjure up very rich and specific memories. For anyone experiencing memory loss, music is a powerful tool.” Thanks to a generous new grant from the nonprofit group Music and MemorySM, The Cedars has exciting new ways to use the power of music to help residents preserve and protect their memory, calm or uplift their emotions and enrich their lives. The Cedars received the entire Music and MemorySM program, an assortment of iPod shuffles, headphones and music downloads as part of the grant. Staff are working with families and loved ones to craft customized playlists for each resident, and to choose music connected with events in each resident’s life story. “Do you ever turn up the radio on your way to work...